Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III

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The Internet, particularly in the gaming sphere, has always had a sort of unwritten code of opinions you’re required to have to participate in “polite society.” There was a brief period where you weren’t allowed to like JRPGs, for instance, and one later on where you weren’t allowed to criticize Kickstarter; we’re talking about that kind of thing. You might also be familiar with “Call of Duty is bad,” which became popular around the same time we all had to repeat mantras about the evils of gray and brown graphics.

None of that’s necessarily accurate, of course. Kickstarter turned out to produce quite a few scams as millions disappeared with no results, JRPGs are seeing a resurgence after years of losing a few points off the top of review scores for being what they are, and Call of Duty is typically a pretty polished FPS with annual releases. It’s reliable fun. Nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, though, it can be a little too reliable, as we see with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

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MW3’s campaign follows right on after the conclusion of the previous game, which makes it a little difficult to discuss in detail without spoiling the story, and involves a battle supporting NATO against Russian forces. Classic characters like Price and Soap show up, of course, and there’s all manner of fancy set pieces to gawk at. Folks die, things blow up, nothing particularly out of the ordinary happens, there’s a stinger at the end…it’s fine, sure, but feels like a DLC for MW2 more than its own thing.

The new Open Combat missions, which are basically open-world assignments set in areas built from multiplayer and Warzone maps, are cute Crysis-ish emergent gameplay romps at best and detract from the series’ focus on the aforementioned fancy set pieces at worst. None of this is bad, but it’s all a little underwhelming and more than a little short for what you’re paying. At least we can look back at Black Ops 4 and be glad we got a single-player campaign at all.

The plot is…well, it’s more of the same, really, and that kind of applies to MW3 as a whole. All of the maps are originally from the original 2009 Modern Warfare 2, which is great if you like classic Call of Duty gameplay and maybe a little less great if you want something new for your cash. Likewise, plenty of the weapons return from previous games, and while there’s also a nice batch of new shootybangs they both feel a little “off” compared to each other, like they’re from different games. Which, well, they are.

Meanwhile, multiplayer feels like it wants to be Call of Duty All-Stars but it doesn’t have the chops to make that happen. No doubt there will be more spice to come in the future, but for now this might be considered a sort of Early Access release.For now, you’ve got old maps, some old guns…everything just feels a little old. Remember when Call of Duty was briefly about sci-fi military combat with lasers and robots? There was even a really cool cyberpunk entry that remains one of the best FPS campaigns around. Those were the days.

If you’re going to buy this, buy it for Zombies. That’s the same fun it’s always been, this time on a new, fancy Warzone map where you can get the lads together and have a great time. Concerns like “the campaign is like four hours long” and “wait, where are the new maps?” and “man, games sure are getting expensive relative to the amount of content they provide, particularly compared to the ever-increasing cost of living” tend to melt away in the face of slaughtering the armies of the dead.

As far as presentation goes, well, it’s Call of Duty, of course it looks great. Play it on a nice gaming PC or one of the newer consoles and you’ll be happy with the results. We’ve heard of some performance and technical issues here and there, but generally speaking those have proven unfounded in our time with the game.

The problem with talking about Call of Duty is the franchise feels like it’s reached “too big to fail” status, which is true to some degree. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has its share of issues, but it’s also the newest and hottest entry in the series. If you’re a fan and your friends are fans, you don’t really have much of a choice but to pick it up to keep up with the changing times. Still, it’d be nice if the next entry had a little more steak to go with the sizzle. MW3 is a perfectly playable FPS – and “perfectly playable” gets a Yay from me – but that’s also what we should expect given its pedigree and the amount of money that clearly went into it.